Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon managed to hold on to the #1 spot in Japan last week, with over in 390,000 sales since release. Following behind it at the #2 spot was last week’s best-selling new release—Fate Extra CCC.

Finally released after multiple delays, Fate/Extra CCC sold 72,883 copies in its first week. That’s right around what the original Fate/Extra sold at launch as well. The original game, released in 2010, moved 72,170 copies in week 1.

At #5 was another new release—Muramasa Rebirth for the Vita, with 45,660 copies sold. Those sales are significantly higher than when Muramasa was originally released into a stagnating Wii software market in 2009. Back then, the game sold a mere 28,807 copies at launch.

Finally, two new Wii U releases for the week—an HD version of Dragon Quest X and Nintendo’s own Game & Wario—failed to make much of a splash. While Wii U hardware sales rose for the week, it’s going to take much more for them to remain consistently high.

Yeah, honestly, “very heavily front-loaded first week” is how nearly all NIS properties perform. DD2 is doing right about bang-on average and is, I suspect, exactly in line with how NIS anticipated it would do.

Hopefully I get to see the sell-through for Holy Sorcery Story, maybe – like most handheld titles these days – it saw more more downloads than physical sales, I hope.

Great to CCC do well, and hopefully see it in the west sometime soon.

Ethan_Twain

Word on the street is that your average portable game in Japan sells about 10% of it’s retail total in download copies. Even a mega-hit like Animal Crossing that had TV ads specifically promoting the download version hasn’t sold more than 25% of it’s retail total on the eShop. So for Holy Sorcery Story we’re looking at a maximum of 2,000 unlisted sales.

And by “word on the street” I mean “Ishaan explained broke it down for me beneath a different article”. Since I saw you wondering about the same thing, I thought I would do my part and pass the knowledge on :)

Vita sales being higher than Wii U sales is no surprise. One has had a price cut and a number of games recently released for it, while the other is priced higher and has had no notable game releases in several months. Nintendo need to figure out what they want to do with the Wii U and quickly.

DanijoEX

I’m hoping that they will… Nintendo isn’t going to do a price cut on the WiiU this early in it’s life.
Not since what happened with the 3DS. It’s just a thought.

Oh, you’re welcome.

z_merquise

I never knew Muramasa Vita sold way better than the Wii version. I guess many people became more aware of the game and/or with Vanillaware than it was years ago. Also, Muramasa seems preferrable to be played in a portable console.

There are a few reasons for Muramasa. First, Marvelous AQL are a lot more well known than they were back in 2009. Second, the Wii software market was stagnating at the time. Muramasa on Wii should have sold more than it did, but by then the Wii market had been polluted by too many half-baked games and shovelware releases.

Sentsuizan_93

Hmm… Yeah. I agree that Muramasa could have done better on the Wii sales wise were it not for the stagnation, but even so, it’s pretty good to see it at a top 5 position on the Vita.

Mrgrgr and Unacceptable World

Don’t forget on how Japanese have changed into more handheld oriented rather than consoles also help Muramasa here.^_^

Honestly, I always find headlines like that misleading, which is why we avoid them. Sure, Wii U saw a surge in sales for this week, but it’s going to go back down next week. You can’t safely say that a system’s sales are stable until they’ve remained that way for a few months on end. Temporary spikes in sales happen all the time when prices are cut or games are released.

Well, given that DQX and Game & Wario aren’t sleeper hits like Luigi’s Mansion. If not now, then we’ll see sales improve sometime in the near future.

Peeka Chu

What are you basing that on? A mainline DQ game and an official “Nintendo Seal of Quality” game sold abysmally on a system desperate for software. Monster Hunter didn’t do much better overseas, but we saw lots of ‘inflated’ headlines like Ishaan mentioned: “SALES UP 125%!!!” 125% of a baseline of 5K isn’t much to sing about. I think its safe to say that the Wii U will end up worse off than the GC considering how fast 3rd party support has withered up.

Monster Hunter didn’t do much better overseas, but we saw lots of ‘inflated’ headlines like Ishaan mentioned:

I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. No data is available for Monster Hunter 3U in the West. If you’re talking about P3rd, it wasn’t released in the West. If you’re talking about Tri, it sold close to 900k in the West and is currently the best-selling MH game overseas.

Peeka Chu

I’m talking about the Wii U version. It won’t crack the NPD, that’s for sure. Tri did quite well yes, but that was with a massive install base. In Europe there were plenty of “WIIU EXPLOSION!” headlines, hyping up the 125% of nothing. I made one statement instead of two, but the end result will be the same between NA/ EU.

Ah. Well, yes, those are fairly inconsequential if sales don’t hold up. That said, your “worse than Gamecube” comment is just as ignorant. TwinTails’ assessment that sales will improve in the future wasn’t wrong. It’s just going to happen when they start to roll their major games out.

Peeka Chu

Only it is tracking worse than the GC. The initial rush might have been higher, but the drop off is far worse. That’s a fact. I’m sorry if you find that ignorant, when its simply the truth. If you go to Neogaf, they’ve charted it out for you. I can dig it up if you’d like me to show you. Also the Wii U is losing 3rd party support faster than the GC ever did, so don’t expect software that isn’t Nintendo’s to bolster sales in the future. Nintendo made a dud with the Wii U, and that is more and more apparent every day. The best that they can do is focus on whatever multi-device they’re cooking up in R&D, ride out another 2 years of strong 3DS support and get that new device to market ASAP.

I agree the Wii U is looking like a stopgap product. That said, your comment said it “will end up worse off than the GC,” which remains to be seen. Premature statements like that don’t take into account the full extent of the data (much of which will appear over the next three years). Vita was selling pretty terribly, too, and while I don’t see sales picking up a whole lot in the future, but it sure as hell isn’t going to end up the worst selling console of all time like some folks like to claim.

Peeka Chu

Vita’s only issues, which almost every critic agreed on was its exorbitant price – compared to the 3DS post markdown – and its lack of compelling software. The recent events in Japan showed that once these two factors are rectified, the hardware can move. The issue with the Wii U is that it’s gimmick fundamentally isn’t compelling. No one wants a two piece DS/ 3DS. Its distracting and broken even as a concept. So you’re left with a box that can compete with current gen, 7 year old hardware, yet is left with even worse support than the 3rd parties who cashed in on the Wii fad. The product is simply not compelling. Full stop. No amount of price cuts or software will assist it beyond coasting on life support. We saw evidence of this with a major release in the UK (Monster Hunter U) and an accompanying one hundred and some odd pound price-cut, and the result was less than spectacular.

The system didn’t launch yesterday. It is out, its success – and failure – is being measured day by day and the evidence toward the latter is mounting. There is nothing premature about my statements, I’m basing them on the markets trends for the past four to five months, and the developer and publisher forecast for where resources will be spent in the coming years and months. Very few third-party developers are giving any sort of support to the Wii U. Not through game-engines, not through ports even. You don’t need to be Nostradamus, nor is it overtly negative to watch and comment on an obvious trend.

Months ago, on Siliconera, I predicted that Nintendo would miss its revised Wii U forecast. I was – and will shortly be proven – correct. The writing is on the wall for the Wii U. It would take a miracle at this point to turn its fortunes around into something worthwhile.

Sales will assuredly improve, but not for the next few months. Wii U’s first real sales surge will happen this Fall, following which we’ll probably see the system start to sell more consistently. Fall is when the first lot of “big” games will hit.

Solomon_Kano

Luigi’s still on top! Whoo!

Glad to hear Muramasa found a larger audience on Vita. I wonder how that did lifetime on Wii?

Mrgrgr and Unacceptable World

Year of Weegee.^_^ Realy happy that Next Level Games hardwork pay-off and here hoping that the game is going to have long long legs lol.^_^

That Ero power from CCC lol. It seems the King of Heroes being AWESOME sells the game lol.^_^

For Game and Wario, i think this is once again Nintendo mistake here. I heard that people who have played the game a bit longer found that the game is very enjoyable however, it is not able to deliver any of those experience in short burst game period which created huge mixed reviews on the game now.T_T

Kioku

Animal Crossing nearing 3 million sales.

LinkofCourage

For retail copies anyway, including digital sales it is nearing 4 million sold.

PoweredByHentai

I now have Seimadou Monogatari. Time to dungeon crawl for the ULTIMATE CURRY. :D

Mrgrgr and Unacceptable World

………… I thought the ultimate curry is already created in Addicted to Curry manga? Lololol.

Jeez…I know it’s because it’s A. an MMO that B. is being rereleased on a console that’s still quite new, but it’s REALLY friggen weird seeing a Dragon Quest game NOT launch at #1 on a Media Create list.

Animal Crossing is starting to look a little scary. That is really amazing. . .

Glad HSS was on there, and it’s cool to see PreCure there too. I didn’t think the game would do that well, honestly. (It looks fun though, but it’s definitely limited and so again, Toei/Bamco being cheap.)

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